Quid struis, Llewyn?: Inside Llewyn Davis and its Literary Allusions

When using source material, the Coen brothers seem to take two different approaches. They either render the material as faithfully as cinematically possible (True Grit; No Country for Old Men), or they adapt the material to extents unrecognizable beyond loose allusions. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which contains a number of occasional narrative details shared with Homer’s Odyssey, is probably the best known of this latter approach. Lesser known is The Big Lebowski’s debt to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Though the connection between the Dude and Philip Marlowe goes far beyond the word Big in both titles, no one could convincingly call The Big Lebowski a faithful rendition of The Big Sleep.

The Coen brothers’ newest addition, Inside Llewyn Davis, is purportedly based on the life of Dave Van Ronk, as told in his autobiography, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Now, the movie does contain a folk singer as its protagonist (Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac), and it is set in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, but it certainly does not seem to be a movie, at least at its core, about the folk scene in 1960s New York. I haven’t read Van Ronk’s autobiography and don’t know much about really any of the scenes in New York, but I think it’s safe to say that Inside Llewyn Davis owes very little to The Mayor of MacDougal Street.

In fact, the Coen brothers have borrowed a number of allusions from another literary source which, despite its vast distance in historical setting, is much closer to the major themes of Inside Llewyn Davis. That source is Virgil’s Aeneid, which describes the wanderings of Aeneas made homeless by the Trojan War until he eventually settles (with much bloodshed) in Italy. Of course, the Aeneid only provides the Coen brothers with literary allusions and some narrative parallels. But what they do borrow effectively strengthens the essence of the film, and helps lead it out of its Greenwich setting into the timelessness of a folk song. As Llewyn himself says in the first non-sung words of the film, “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song”. The same could be applied to the film itself, especially considering its literary relationship with Virgil’s never new and never old poem, the Aeneid.

Despite the great difference between the Aeneid and Inside Llewyn Davis, there are some clues provided that help make the identification. Most notably, is Llewyn’s journey to The Gate of Horn, a reference to the actual Chicago club of folk music fame, but also to one of the two gates of the underworld described in the Aeneid by which dreams (and Aeneas) enter the world. In the Aeneid true dreams pass through the Gate of Horn, whereas false dreams (and Aeneas) pass through the Gate of Ivory. I think it must be significant that the scenes just preceding Llewyn’s performance at The Gate of Horn are the most surreal and dreamlike of the movie. For one, Roland Turner (played by John Goodman) is constantly sleeping (for reasons that are later explained in the film).

A later allusion provides a second concrete key to the source. The cat of the film, Llewyn’s occasional fellow wanderer and feline mirror, happens to be named Ulysses, the Greek hero who in own his wanderings and search for home is Virgil’s mirror for Aeneas (Ulysses is the name used for Odysseus in the Aeneid). In the film, it must be significant that Llewyn expresses surprise, even shock, upon hearing the cat’s name. Thematically, this is important, for at that moment, Llewyn seems to recognize his existential connection to the home-searching cat through the literary allusion to its name. This recognition is further supported immediately afterwards, when Llewyn comes across a poster of The Incredible Journey, a Disney movie about three pets wandering through the Canadian wilderness to find their way back home. Again, he stares at it ponderously, perhaps putting the two references together in a moment of epiphany.

With these two concrete allusions (The Gate of Horn and Ulysses) pointing the way, others can be teased out. Jean (played by Carey Mulligan) is an obvious Dido, scorned and angry at the hero for potentially impregnating her—an inversion of the Aeneid where Dido desires to become impregnated by Aeneas, but shows equal, if not more, scorn when he abandons her.

Moreover, the way to Chicago seems to parallel Aeneas’ trip into the underworld, with the driver Johnny Five (played by Garrett Hedlund) as a kind of Charon, silently steering his vessel, and Roland Turner as a kind of demonic Rhadamanthus, ever so judging and, as he claims, practiced in the dark arts. (I’ll note that Goodman played the Devil, or at least a Devil-like, character in the earlier Coen brothers’ film, Barton Fink). On this trip, Llewyn also has to pay for gas, much like Aeneas must pay for his ferry ride.

And at the end of Inside Llewyn Davis (possible spoiler alert ahead), the man who attacks Llewyn simply vanishes into the darkness of New York. The Aeneid ends similarly: in the final line of the poem, Aeneas’ foe, Turnus, is killed and his soul flies off into the “shadows”.

There are other allusions that can be teased out, but to conclude, I will provide only one more. While in a restroom stall, Llewyn looks over at graffiti on the wall, which reads: “What are you doing?” Ignoring the obvious implications of the toilet humour, Llewyn’s confused (again almost shocked) expression points to the deeper meaning of the message, as if it was speaking directly to him, questioning his decisions to wander homeless from couch to couch, from trivial gig to gig. In what must be its literary source, the Aeneid describes Mercury coming to Aeneas, who is wasting his life away in Carthage, in order to shake him back on his journey to find a home. Like Llewyn’s restroom graffiti, Mercury twice inquires of Aeneas, according to Rolfe Humphries’ well-known translation, “What are you doing?” (p. 96).

It is this question, asked of both Llewyn and Aeneas, that strikes at the hearts of the homeless wanderers, attempting to stir them onward and homeward. A fitting theme for a folk song.

Italian Neorealism and the Gospel

Pasolini’s 1964 cinematic presentation of the Gospel according the Matthew (Il vangelio secundo Matteo) has to be one of the best made. Pasolini, an atheist with nostalgia for belief (his words), supposedly decided to direct the Gospel of Matthew after reading it to kill time while waiting for crowds to die down who gathered to see Pope John XXIII.

Because the film exclusively uses dialogue from the Gospel (and some of Matthew’s quotations from the Old Testament Prophets), the pace is slow and contemplative. Only in Jesus’ longer monologues are words brought to the forefront where they flash excitedly past in the rhetorical tones of actor Enrique Irazoqui’s Italian, or on the trembling English subtitles below, which can’t quite seem to keep up. Jesus’ railing against the Pharisees is especially effective for this reason, although the sermon on the mount does not live up to its literary qualities.

But Pasolini makes up for the restrictions on the dialogue by allowing headshots of the characters to carry the drama. These innumerable faces, so simple and subtle, often of elderly woman blinking in the hot Palestinian light or of rugged men with stone-faced curiosity, offer the necessary insight and novelty into the Gospel’s literary material. One of the best examples can be found in the opening scene which presents a serious looking Mary whose dark, young eyes look with concern and confidence.

Mary

The next shot features, in great contrast, a pathetic looking Joseph whose slight frown and steadfast eyes indicate a hurt and tacitly angry man. Mary looks down with ambiguous submission to God’s will; Joseph is further hurt and now embarrassed without an explanation; he awkwardly leaves down a ruined path through the dry terrain. Not once does he look back as Mary sadly watches him. After Joseph gets his explanation from an androgynous looking angel in the nearby village, he returns and the scene ends with a relived, almost teary Joseph, who comforted by the modest, but genuine, smile of Mary that not only welcomes him, but also seems to affirm her confidence in the God’s providence.

Pasolini also knows how to control the narrative’s development. While many of the Gospel’s episodes do not have the same kind of dramatic potential that Pasolini has read into the marital tensions between Joseph and Mary, a good portion of Matthew simply needs to be enacted to be interesting. The depiction of the slaughter of the innocents is terrifying in its ruthlessness; John the Baptist is as frenzy-eyed and convicted as those he baptizes; the instantaneous healing of a deformed man is perfectly performed by a simple editing trick and a joyous blast of music; and of course the crucifixion, as the climax of the Gospel’s narrative, is not over-done, but remains as consistently subtle as the rest of the film. There are some scenes, however, that do fall a bit flat. The temptation in the desert is disappointingly bland, mainly because Satan looks too colloquial (although the diabolical figure blurred by the heat on the horizon does make an interesting comparison to Jesus walking on water); and the feeding of the five thousand is confusingly portrayed as empty baskets that turn into full baskets (here the editing trick does not work as well).

Satan walking on sand

Jesus walking on water

Although much of the movie is silent, Pasolini’s choice and use of music is ingenious. Classical, blues, and folk are all employed appropriately and effectively. Odette’s “Motherless Child”, which is sung while John the Baptist slowly pours single handfuls of water on the heads of his followers, is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. But the real musical gems are the sudden explosions of the Missa Luba, a version of the mass sung in tradition Congolese folk style, that almost make the audience jump up in exaltation at a healing miracle or, in its most effective moment, the resurrection.

Naturally, Pasolini’s interpretation of the Gospel is slanted towards social justice. The Pharisees come across as tyrannically wielding religion over their decrepit subjects. Jesus is as much the destroyer of religious hegemony as he is the saviour of the poor. The subaltern figures say no words—their faces alone express their deep misery, and each wretch seems silently sceptical of the manifestation of a God who has been silent for so long. But it is because of this slant towards or emphasis on social justice that makes Pasolini’s rendition of the Gospel of Matthew the best yet. There is no joking Jesus who can’t resist splashing his disciples with water to show them (and the audience) that he is as human as the rest of us. And there is no banally prophetic Jesus crafting furniture of the future before a short-sighted Mary who, with painfully obvious irony, proclaims its unlikelihood of “catching on”. Pasolini’s Gospel of Matthew is presented as Matthew tells it, and therein is its success.

With any luck, this will be the first of a series on Pasolini.

Hemingway with a Happy Ending: Silver Linings Playbook

**Spoilers below**

In an early scene of Silver Linings Playbook, Pat (played by Bradley Cooper) throws Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms outside the window in frustration over the bleakness of the book’s ending (where the main character, Henry, after losing his wife and child, walks home in the rain). Pat, waking up his parents in the early morning hours to rant about the book, says:

I mean the whole time — let me just break it down for you — the whole time you’re rooting for this Hemingway guy to survive the war and to be with the woman that he loves, Catherine Barkley… and he does. He does. He survives the war, after getting blown up he survives it, and he escapes to Switzerland with Catherine. But now Catherine’s pregnant. Isn’t that wonderful? She’s pregnant. And they escape up into the mountains and they’re gonna be happy, and they’re gonna be drinking wine and they dance — they both like to dance with each other, there’s scenes of them dancing, which was boring, but I liked it, because they were happy. You think he ends it there? No! He writes another ending. She dies, Dad! I mean, the world’s hard enough as it is, guys. It’s fucking hard enough as it is. Can’t somebody say, “Hey, let’s be positive? Let’s have a good ending to the story?”

Retrospectively, this piece of dialogue not only foreshadows the later half of the movie, but also provides a certain aspect that, in my opinion, allows the movie to make any sense. By the end of the movie, [here’s the spoiler for those who care], all the tragic potential so carefully set up in the first half of the movie is completely nullified by a dance competition, which to quote Pat, I think it’s fair to say “was boring, but I liked it, because they were happy”. (Note also the number of times Pat says the word “dance”). Evidently, Silver Linings Playbook is an attempt at remedying this problem with Hemingway. By providing the grit in its first half and the happy ending in its second, it purports to be a Hemingway story with a happy ending.

This interpretation, I think, best explains the abrupt break in narrative, tone, character etc that occurs about halfway through the movie. All the problems that Pat and Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence) have to deal with in the first half disappear; their mental health issues are no longer prevalent and they become two more or less normal people focused on winning a sport. The obsessive compulsive disorder of Pat’s father (played by Robert De Niro in what must be one of his best roles in the last decade) is no longer a problem once he bets all his savings on his son for a chance to own that restaurant he always dreamed of. And most obvious of all Pat’s psychiatrist transforms into a goofy ethnic buddy, whose narrative role denigrates to providing humour chiefly by saying things in a funny Indian accent.

Also reminiscent of A Farewell to Arms is the penultimate scene of the movie, which depicts Pat walking alone on a clear night to reconcile with his true love. Of course, there is no rain, no death, no depression, and seemingly all the problems have been solved. It’s almost as if director / writer David O. Russell is saying, Hemingway’s had his turn, and now it’s time to see how things end up with a happy ending.

I myself prefer Hemingway, but can respect what Russell is doing–as long as he tells us beforehand.

Still Covering Islam: Argo

It was quite a surprise to see Jian Ghomeshi writing on the film Argo in the Globe and Mail the other day. But the biggest surprise wasn’t that it was Ghomeshi who was writing on film (he did after all famously stay away from the topic when interviewing Billy Bob Thornton), or that he was writing in the Globe and Mail away from his usual home at the CBC. It was that he was criticizing Argo for its negative depictions of Iranians–a bold move and one that the online readers (at least those who comment and vote on comments) reacted strongly against.

It probably also comes as little surprise that I more or less agree with Ghomeshi’s assessment. Especially after reading the original story in Wired (a very interesting and highly recommended read), I was struck by the way co-producer, director and lead actor Ben Affleck contrived the majority of drama and suspense in Argo. After a promising beginning the story seemed to falter and become episodic in its attempt to keep things moving. Some episodes are exciting and tense; but there are a number of lamentable moments. For example, Affleck’s character Tony Mendez spends a mopey night with a bottle of Scotch thinking about his boy back home before he decides to disobey his upper command’s foolish order to “pull the plug” and leave the captives to face their unsuspected doom.

Affleck being mopey

Likewise, the final chase scene was just an unfortunate directorial disaster, especially for a film that prides itself on historical accuracy (even to the point of bragging during the credits where they reveal how well they constructed actual images from the 1979 Iranian Revolution). Basically, the plot moves from tension to tension with very little reference to anything beyond the immediate tension.

But to return to Ghomeshi’s point, the most lamentable of plot contrivances involve the characterizations of Iranians. On the one hand, we learn that Iranians are fanatical and irrational to the point of violence if they get their pictures taken unwillingly; on the other that Iranians become infantile to the point of communicating not through language but rather  hand gestures and laser sounds when presented with a relic of the western imagination (ironically the story boards for the fake movie itself).

Of course, Argo does try to give some balance to the story by showing news footage of Americans beating up an innocent (I assume) Iranian man. But as Omer M. Mozaffar has cogently argued, these instances are simply pseudo-balances that allow the characterization of an entire nation to be masked:

when we watch these films, we regard that savage behavior by our people as the exception to our norm. When we watch the footage of the American young men beating up the Iranian, the first thing that comes to mind is that those punks are Rednecks, not normal Americans. In contrast, when nearly every speaking Iranian character seems to possess a gun, and if not that, then at least a determined vendetta to kill Americans, and if not that, then at least a swarthy frown, it is hard to consider that as anything except the norm.

And yet the fact remains that most people really liked the film and had no problems with the way that almost all of the Iranian characters in the film are boiled down to a single anonymous group prone to rage who serve no other cinematic purpose than to move the plot along. (I do also admit that most of the non-Iranian characters are pretty flat, with the exception of Alan Arkin and John Goodman, but at least they have names and unique motives that form their individual characterizations).

I figure that a much more interesting film would have dealt with the role that media played in America at the time. As Edward Said has tirelessly bemoaned, western media during the hostage crisis wasn’t really interested in (or perhaps capable of) understanding the complex political nature of Iran or Islamism. Instead, mainstream media helped promote an “us-vs-them” dichotomy by focusing on an Islam “writhing in self-provoked frenzy … whose manifestation of the hour was a disturbingly neurotic Iran” (Said, Covering Islam, 84).

Just a month before Argo opened to general release, the world was captured by the riots in the Middle East following the attack on the Libyan embassy and the awareness of the “Innocence of Muslims”. During these one or two weeks of “Muslim rage” I was most struck by the parallels between today’s media presentation and those criticized by Said in the 1981 and 1997. Most significantly, Middle Eastern online English papers, such as Egypt’s Ahram Online or Al Jazeera, generally presented the causes of the protests and riots as politically motivated, whereas western media generally presented the causes as religiously motivated.

Moreover, western media, almost as if they were unable to get away from the “Orientalist” discourses, couldn’t resist describing the “rage” (a la Bernard Lewis) occurring in the Middle East. Probably the most unfair (on my part) example is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s now infamous Newsweek cover story “Muslim Rage”.

Muslims raging

Outside of Newsweek, I did note that the noun “rage” or the adjective “angry” were favored terms in more moderate media during those two weeks. For just a few examples, The New York Times title, “Angry Libyans Target Militias, Forcing Flight”, is complimented by an article on “Frustrated Protesters fill the streets in Syria’s capital”. In the Associated Press’s account there is a subsection entitled, “Peaceful but angry crowd”. And The Economist ran the story “Muslim Rage: Why they won’t calm down” with a cover picture of a silhouetted man holding a machine gun in front of a burning car. The Economist did have another article in the same issue entitled “The Rage in Spain”, but this article focused on the political issues; the article on the Middle Eastern riots addressed “Arab dysfunction”, Islam’s “inferiority complex”, and “the world’s least grateful people”.

My long-winded point with all this is really just to express how disappointed I was with Argo. It could have been a masterpiece that explored the illusions set up by American media that obfuscate the complexity of the actual events and causes as mirrored in the fake movie illusion that obfuscates the escape of seven Americans.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t really expect this level of nuance, and the only thing I can do now, as Aerosmith sings in the trailer, is to dream on.

Goodbye Cumberland Theatre

The Cumberland Theatre is closing today. For me this is sad news. Even though I no longer live in Toronto, I still feel much nostalgia for its labyrinthine escalators and staircases, that narrow alley that must have been one of the coldest and windiest spots in the city at all times of year, and of course the films that it played. The first film I saw with my wife (then just an acquaintance) was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou playing at the Cumberland, and on our first date we went back to see Les choristes.

But this closure was bound to happen. Since 2008 there have been rumours circulating that the theatre was to be demolished for condos. And with some rare exceptions, the theatre was never sold out. In fact, you could usually show up a minute or two before the film started and be sure that there would be no trouble getting a ticket or seat in time. So although I’m sorry to see it go, I’m not surprised in the slightest.

The Cumberland had to walk a fine line. It knew its role and it kept to it. But a quick look at its website reveals how difficult that must have been. The last shows playing at the Cumberland are A Separation, which won the Golden Bear and the Oscar for best foreign language film, and Footnote, which won best screenplay at Cannes and was nominated for the best foreign language Oscar. These are quality films that one would think could draw an audience. But on the website, in the column over, appears adds for the movies people really want to see: The Avengers, The Hobbit, and Hunger Games.

Therein lies the problem for the Cumberland. Nobody can compete with the multiplex when it promises Robert Downing Jr. in an Iron Man suit. Big Hollywood Superhero movies and their sequels are so popular and powerful that Samuel L. Jackson can even demand the head of a critic for not liking The Avengers. It’s no wonder that the majority of film goers haven’t even heard of A Separation, let alone have any urge to see a complex drama revolving around a separated Iranian couple.

(On the other side of the coin, the Bell Lightbox in Toronto has picked up where the AGO’s Cinematheque has left off by playing older, critically acclaimed films, as well as some new indy or Canadian releases. Bell Lightbox has signaled some financial difficulties, but I am amazed at how full their theatres can get for fifty-year-old foreign films.)

So what could the Cumberland do really? Their mandate was to play newly released independent films, which can never get enough press to attract the masses. It could have sold out like my local theatre, the Dunbar in Vancouver, and become a mini multiplex. (The Dunbar, which states that the best part about going to a movie is the popcorn, is currently playing American Reunion).

But I’m glad the Cumberland didn’t go down that route. It went out fulfilling its niche. I will miss it.

Power, Propaganda and the Mythopoeia of Giorgos Lanthimos, Part 1: Dogtooth

Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (2009) is a story about three siblings who have grown up and live almost completely isolated from society at large, within a world of arbitrary and occasionally malicious social conventions fabricated by their parents. The entire family lives together in the seclusion of a compound that is fortified as much by physical bounds as by a mythology that keeps the children from any real knowledge of the world beyond the walls of their home. Over the course of the film, the arbitrariness of social constructs, from language to the assumed nature of things, is highlighted to the absurd. Telephones are called salt shakers; zombie becomes the name for a yellow flower; airplanes are as small as they seem from ground level; and stray cats are dangerous beasts to be feared and brutally exterminated.

Problems, however, start to arise when the patriarch decides to hire a young female, Christina, to satisfy the maturing sexual appetite of his son. Significantly, this woman is a security guard at the patriarch’s workplace, whose job to enforce regularity, exclusion and perhaps even confinement is symbolically similar to the father’s own role in the family compound.

For this reason Christina’s effect on the children is delightfully ironic: the security guard happens to be the one to introduce the children to real world intrusions. Most devastatingly, she lends the older daughter (played by Aggeliki Papoulia) a few movies on VHS, which in turn sow the seeds of curiosity and even dissent. Because the older daughter has never seen anything other than poorly recorded home videos whose mere purpose is to entrench the family mythology, a movie such as Jaws has a deep impact on her.

With the involvement of real world media, Dogtooth begins to refer outside of the fabricated (and fictional) compound of the family to the actual screen of the theatre upon which the movie itself is playing. Much like the family of Dogtooth, the actual audience sitting in front of the theatre screen watching Dogtooth is literally confined within a room isolated from the outside world. And in this confined space, the audience is presented with an alternative, cinematic, world that is completely fabricated, mythological and ostensibly ideological. In this manner, Dogtooth becomes a multi-layered criticism not only of the actual social world(s) of the audience, fabricated and mythologized through power and oppression, but also of the typical cinematic fare that subtly entrenches acceptance of these fabricated and mythological worlds.

It is no coincidence that the oldest daughter watches Jaws, Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster (and a major propagator of society’s irrational fear of sharks). The other film, fittingly for similar reasons, is Rocky.

Beyond the superficial differences, Jaws or Rocky (or the majority of Hollywood studio productions) are really no better than the home videos of the family compound. The oldest daughter is, in a sense, merely trading her family’s media of mythology with the real world’s media of mythology. Both types of media (the family’s home videos and the Hollywood movies leant to the oldest daughter) may be harmless in and of themselves, but in fact they help to uphold arbitrary and occasionally malicious social conventions. The moral of Dogtooth isn’t that isolating children is bad, but that the means for fabricating worldviews permeates throughout all societies, including our own.

But what about a movie like Dogtooth? What if Christina, the security guard, had given the oldest daughter Lanthimos’ film instead of Spielberg’s? By displaying the roles that media plays in entrenching and disrupting social mythologies and ideologies, Dogtooth can purport to be the external force that will sow the seeds of dissent among its audience, even if it is obviously ideologically infused. At the very least, Dogtooth tries to show that the real world audience is no better than the family of the compound—its (our) worlds are as violent and sexually perverse (in both their restriction and liberation of sexuality) as the world of Dogtooth.

But by the end of the movie, Lanthimos turns this solution on its head. Jaws doesn’t ultimately liberate the oldest daughter, and neither will Dogtooth ultimately liberate us. For the movie ends (spoiler alert) with the oldest daughter stuck in the trunk of her father’s car, parked outside of his workplace. Despite her attempts at liberation, she is not free; in fact, she is less free. So also the real world audience cannot escape the authoritarian control of their worlds and worldviews. Movies like Dogtooth can shake the foundations, but they cannot provide the means to transcend.

See also:

The Kino Lorder Blog – On Dogtooth
The E-Film Blog – Cinema Strange #6. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009)
The E-Film Blog – Closer Look: Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009)

Hunger Games: Just Another Sports Movie?

The Hunger Games is the first of the highly anticipated movies of the year to be released, and it definitely did not disappoint its investors. A $152.2 million opening weekend is no small deal. It has also caught the attention of a number of critics, whose praise is averaged out in a respectable metascore of 67 / 100.

It cannot be denied that The Hunger Games, if anything, is a fun ride. I admit that I have not read the books by Suzanne Collins, but from what I understand, the film has made a successful case for “sticking to the story”. Moreover, Jennifer Lawrence as Catniss Eerdeen acts within a finely balanced line of intriguing aloofness that slowly morphs into comfortable familiarity without us ever realizing it. By the end of the movie, she has become an intimate friend not only to other individual characters in the movie, notably the coarse Haymitch Abernathy, played by Woody Harrelson, but also to the entire audience of Capitol and the 12 Districts and to us.

The narrative pace of the film is also decent. Admittedly, the film does slow down in the second half and ends all too abruptly. But the latter two acts are upheld by the momentum established in the first, when we are presented with the details of a world that is interesting and complex enough to keep us engaged through to the lacklustre of the finale.

On top of its entertainment factor, The Hunger Games seems to offer a political and moral lesson.  Most of the critics note something along the lines of Rick Groen’s claim that The Hunger Games “speaks to and ominously dissects that culture; it’s Lord of the Flies updated for the electronic age”. (A good list of the moral lessons that come forth in the film’s allegory can be found here at the Political Film blog).

But other critics have not been as impressed by the philosophical depths that the film initially promises. Roger Ebert, for example, argues that “the film leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism”.

Although my own opinion of the film falls closer to that of Ebert, The Hunger Games does create an interesting dialogue by means of its “meta”-qualities. The film is, after all, visual entertainment about the potential consequences of visual entertainment. The first half of the film does an excellent job dissecting the propaganda used by Panem’s totalitarian rulers. We are presented with a strong sense of injustice as well as an understanding of the impotence of the oppressed, and we are infuriated.

Director Gary Ross cleverly reinforces the injustice of the situation by alluding to familiar totalitarian strategies of our own world. Not only does Catniss’s own district shares similarities with the impoverished rural setting of Winter’s Bone (aptly enough for Lawrence), but it also has just enough Auschwitz in it to make sure that we don’t miss the point. And the Nazi overtones don’t end there; they appear again in the art deco architecture of the Capitol and “mass ornament” of the in-film audiences, which always act together as an individual, much like the audiences of the ancient coliseum and Jerry Springer’s studio. Notably, the introductory entrance of the “tributes” could be an updated, flashier scene out of Olympia.

(Note the similarities between the flames around the 40 sec mark and those worn by Catniss and Peeta, as well as the respective opening ceremonies which appear from 6 min 42 sec on).

Also soldiers decked in riot gear, always watching and always ready, obviously bring to mind images of authoritarian police states as well as suppression of protesters throughout modern American history.

In effect, the film’s first act does a fantastic job of guiding its audience towards feelings of rage at the oppression of the lower classes. But after this initial act, this rage diminishes altogether. In fact, the very point from which it disappears from the film is clearly marked: it occurs when the in-film hunger game begins and a great number of the characters are hacked to death in a mad scramble for weapons. It is at this moment that we no longer feel angry at the cruel repression of the ruling class enjoying life in the Capitol (and, if the allegory is to be held, of our own world). Instead of rage against the machine, we feel pity for the individuals who weren’t strong or savvy enough to survive. We ourselves are tricked out of watching the grand narrative and brought into watching the hunger game.

Even the death of Rue, which sparks a riot in her own district, does not restore our initial resentment for the tyranny of the state. We do not ponder the fact that her death was inevitable due to the authoritarian rule that enables and encourages such death. Rather, we are taken off guard because we had hoped that she might survive somehow. In hindsight, this shouldn’t really have come as any surprise. Ever since the game began, since the first child was brutally murdered, we have been watching with everybody else, and as with everybody else, we have abandoned our emotions to the puppet masters who can now control them how they will. The film has become no more than a reality show or sports movie—the commentary is gone.

As such, The Hunger Games and the in-film hunger game are almost indistinguishable. We know who to cheer for and who to boo right up to the very end of the game and the film. The tables are turned and we become almost no better than the derisive in-film audience (the only difference really is that we know Jennifer Lawrence and the other actors will survive to walk future red carpets).

This shift in tone (in genre even) is what signals the ultimate failure of The Hunger Games, even though at the same time it opens up the potential for self-reference and thereby unwittingly continues its commentary on entertainment and state propaganda. By transforming completely into that which it criticizes, The Hunger Games becomes too transparent, too effective at its job.

At one point, Catniss ponders what would happen if no one watched the games. But everyone (Catniss included) knows that the people of the 12 Districts aren’t going to stop watching this time, and neither are we. It is unfortunate that director Gary Ross was unwilling or unable to bring out this irony at little bit more, but perhaps that’s the point.

Hiding behind Race: Oscar’s White Glimmer and The Help

The L.A. Times recently brought to light some interesting statistics regarding the demographics of the voting members of the American Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. It turns out that 94% of the members are white while 77% are male. These stats, of course, should come as no surprise. If I were to guess the gender and ethnic origins of those responsible for the top grossing movies of any recent year, I would have to pick white males.

Of course, the top grossing movies of any year rarely appear on the Academy Awards list of nominations, or at least the list of significant nominations. The final instalment of the Harry Potter series, for example, was the top money maker for 2011, and it is the only one of the top ten highest grossing movies to have been nominated for the Academy Awards. Its nominations, however, all dealt with visuals (Art Direction, Visual Effects and Makeup), none of which it won.

But a quick glance at the nominees of the more respected categories of last year’s Academy Awards merely confirm the fact that today’s movies have white, male ideology at their foundation (with perhaps the one exception of The Descendants). This is not to say that any of the films on the list are bad. In fact, some of the films, namely The Tree of Life, Hugo, and The Artist, have the potential to enter the cinematic canon in future years. Midnight in Paris may also be given future recognition as Woody Allen’s swansong, and The Descendants will certainly appear on later Alexander Payne retrospectives. The rest of the Best Picture nominations will likely be forgotten by 2013, with the possible exception of Moneyball, whose fate rests on the future (and, I might add, probable) successes of Bennett Miller.

Despite the artistic merit of these films, it still remains that all the Best Picture nominees contain white, male ideology. But ironically, this white, male ideology is most apparent in the two most ostensibly multicultural nominees, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Help. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has probably been the most controversial nominee on the list, since it was almost universally panned by just about everyone, critics and general viewers alike. The almost all white cast, of course, gives a fairly good idea of what type of people made the film (written by white, male Eric Roth, based on a book by white, male Jonathan Safran Foer, and directed by white, male Stephen Daldry—both of whom have otherwise contributed to decent films). It’s not the white cast, however, that gives it away, but the ending—where the audience is taught about the existence of its multicultural family waiting just outside the theatre doors. In a similar vein, The Help, based on a book by a white female and directed by a white male, relishes in ostensive multiculturalism. Black people are people too, even if they haven’t changed much since Gone with the Wind.

There is a certain amount of white ideological back patting in both Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Help. For they don’t really teach anything new; they just confirm a general, innocuous view that multiculturalism is good and that racism shouldn’t exist. And when racism does exist, it remains only in safe places, in cinematic fictions, where it can be exploited for sentimental effect. This is pure, white, catharsis. In The Help the audience is shown who is bad (mean white people) and who is good (a misunderstood white woman and the noble black women). Through a dramatic, witty and feel-good working out of the plot the audience can disassociate themselves with the mean white people and see themselves as noble white people whose moral aptitude transcends that of the mean white characters. The audience relishes in the fact that most of the white people are mean, because they are told to disassociate themselves with that white meanness, and in turn associate themselves with the good white woman, Skeeter. In effect, The Help isn’t teaching people about racism, as it superficially claims. Instead, it tricks its viewers by giving them the chance to believe that they would have acted differently from the negative characters in the film. The end result is that the audience is led to discover that the moral of the movie is the same one that the audience held all along, and it can now pat itself on the back for being so savvy and so good.

This isn’t the first time in Academy history that white ideology plays at the centre of a film that is ostensibly multicultural. I don’t think I need to mention 1989 Best Picture winner Driving Miss Daisy. A bit over a decade later, 2004 Best Picture winner, Crash makes a noble attempt to deal with race, but quickly descends into tawdry melodrama that exposes its superficial message. In 2009, The Blind Side, which won Sandra Bullock an Oscar, does not shirk from its message, aptly described by one reviewer as “what would black people do without nice white people”. Only two years later will The Help‘s Skeeter bring a similar voice and salvation to poor black women of Jim Crow days.

The Academy has clearly not learned its lesson, and the movies on race that it nominates are unable to teach. Perhaps it won’t learn until it stops regulating minority directors to the sidelines with the mentality: “equal but separate”.